A Recipe! (Sage Apple Carrot Pasta)

Cuddle Cthulhu and I haven’t done a ton of exploring because of dissertation work and applying for jobs and other various busy things. But next time I go exploring for book benches I will definitely bring him with me.

In the meantime, have a recipe I made.

Sage-Apple Carrot Noodles

Hold on to your hats. This is going to be way more delicious than you think it is.

Ingredients:

(Lunch size portions: serve two, or one with leftovers. Would probably be good over rice or as a dinner side.)

2 largish carrots

1 stalk of celery (optional)

2-4 tablespoons of butter

Small sweet apple

Fresh sage

Freshly ground black pepper

Salt

Lemon juice

Preparation:

1) Peel the carrots, unless you don’t like to peel carrots. Usually I don’t peel carrots, but the skins on my carrots were kind of discolored, so I peeled these. Feel free to peel or not peel carrots at your discretion. At any rate, you’ll be using a vegetable peeler to turn the carrots into pasta-like strips.

2) That being said, use a vegetable peeler (or knife, I guess, but I really recommend a peeler for this) to turn the carrots into carrot pasta. I found it was much easier to control the peeler with the carrot lying on its side, not holding it standing up. Your results may vary. Turn two delicious, fat carrots into delicious carrot strips. I did my best to keep them long, but sometimes they turn out short anyway. And I had a variation of thin, spaghetti strips and fat, fettuccine strips. Yum, yum carrots. (For more carrot-y goodness, you could use 3 or 4 carrots. Use your judgment.)

3) Now that you have a pile of carrot pasta, cut an apple into really small pieces. Not quite minced or anything, but definitely smaller than 1” cubes. If you’re using some celery, same thing here.

4) Melt about 2-3 tablespoons of butter in a wok or frying pan on medium heat. I don’t know how many tablespoons it was because they don’t measure butter that way here, but that’s my best guess. It’s a large amount of tasty butter. I use salted butter because that’s what I had, but unsalted will also be just fine. Let the butter melt and get hot and bubbly, so it just starts to brown.

6) Smell delicious yet? That’s because you’re a master chef. Look at you, throwing things in a hot pan like a boss. Sprinkle a bit of lemon juice in there. It makes the most delicious sizzle.

7) After about 1-2 minutes of sage-y, apple-y goodness, time to add your carrots. The carrots are going to seem like they overwhelm the sauce you made. They do a bit, but the flavor is all there. Just get them all nice and buttered using a spatula or some sort of utensil that won’t scratch your pan. If you want to add another small pat of butter, feel free. I did. But I really like butter. This is also the time to add in some good black pepper (seriously, good black pepper – the kind you crack with a grinder) and some salt to taste.

8) I’ll be honest, I really didn’t time this. It was probably about 4-5 minutes. Mostly, I just let the carrots get hot and slightly tender. I’m guessing they were not cooked all the way through, but they were delicious that way. I’m sure it could afford to cook a little longer if you wanted. Taste it and see how delicious it is. Add more salt or pepper if you want, and serve hot. Ta-da!

(Sorry for no pictures! I didn’t think about it when I was making it.)